Dr Marlon Perera

Joseph Ischia: I’m chatting to Marlon Perera who is a trainee currently in Queensland and is the winner of the Villa’s Marshall prize this year for his research presentation titled “The renoprotective role of zinc pre-conditioning against radiographic contrast media induced nephrotoxicity. We’ve asked him just to give us a quick highlight of his talk.

Dr Marlon Perera: The question we asked was, how can we as urologists protect the kidneys against contrast nephropathy? It’s a growing problem obviously for urologists. So, we had the hypothesis that zinc reconditioning used intravenously could protect against contrast nephropathy. So, we trialed an in-vitro model, a cellular model, and essentially expose kidney cells to contrast media with prior zinc pre-conditioning. We found that zinc pre-conditioning resulted in improved cell survival and reduction in the generation of reactive oxygen species. So, the results are early but they are promising and I think translation of this work into small animal and human models are required.

Joseph: I am a little biased but I’m excited by the role of zinc and I think it’s a great opportunity for us to show that urologists can do basic science research and we’ve got plenty of centers around Australia that do it, so congratulations Marlon.

Marlon: Thank you very much Joseph.